


Rescue Not Required

by luvanderwon



Category: Havemercy Series - Jaida Jones & Danielle Bennett
Genre: (so it's still sad in parts because this is Volstovic Cycle), Fix-It, Gen, Luvander is a prize plum, M/M, Raphael is a poetic disaster, poor taste jokes, post-steelhands, return of the Pirate Husbands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 08:10:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13162836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luvanderwon/pseuds/luvanderwon
Summary: One frosty morning, Magoughin strolled back into Thremedon with a pocketful of Cobalt blue sand and a jaunty whistle on his mouth.





	Rescue Not Required

**Author's Note:**

  * For [capncrystal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/capncrystal/gifts).



> For Crystal (capncrystal) for this year's Festive Bastion exchange! To fill the request for "post-steelhands airmen reunite with a comrade they thought was dead. I don't even care who I just want some of that good "oh my god you're ALIVE" shit." Since you liked [Rumours](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5529428) so much two years ago I decided to just... continue that fanon! I hope you enjoy this absolute silliness! 
> 
> (Nobody is actually pregnant. Especially not Luvander.)
> 
> Many thanks to Anna (moonix) for her help and support <3

One frosty morning, Magoughin strolled back into Thremedon with a pocketful of Cobalt blue sand and a jaunty whistle on his mouth. A bit shabby, a bit of a patchwork, but wholly human and missing no more limbs than he had been the last time anyone had seen him. 

“I’m looking for my other hand,” he said when the door opened. “Think I left it somewhere around these parts.”

Luvander, to his credit, did not faint. He turned very pale, though, and staggered a bit; had to clutch futilely at the wall for balance. Magoughin counted him blinking seven times in quick succession, each blink causing his own grin to widen a fraction more. Luvander gaped like a fish and then shut the door in Magoughin’s face. 

“Rude,” he murmured to himself, rocking back on his heels. He bent down to push the letterbox open with the chilled fingers of the hand he did still possess, and call “thought you had better manners” through the slot. 

When the door was wrenched open a second time Magoughin was already armed with his widest smile and composing a quip to rattle his former comrade just a bit more, but it wasn’t Luvander who extended the meaty hook of one fist to haul him over the threshold of a hat shop named after a dragon. And while Magoughin had never really thought Ghislain might be dead - because bringing down an Airman was one thing but it must take a real supersonic force to bring down a mountain - he hadn’t anticipated finding Ghislain here, exactly, either. 

In truth, he’d avoided thinking about Ghislain as much as possible. 

He’d avoided thinking about all of them. 

“Hello, old man,” he gasped a bit as Ghislain kicked the door shit behind them and held Magoughin at the generous length of his arms’ reach against the wall, scrutinizing him with narrowed eyes. He still had the scar running through one eyebrow from a tavern brawl back in the day. Magoughin remembered that fondly. Otherwise, there were no fresher signs of battle. Ghislain, too, looked a lot like he had done the last time Mags had seen him - give or take a few elements. Specifically: take away the hulking steel Crusher he’d been flying, the soot and ash and war-cries, and the fire-proof leather flight gear, and add a few more earrings, a crimson crawling hickey looking livid on his neck, and a flash of gold on his left hand, which was still bunched in Magoughin’s shirt front. 

Ah. 

“It’s very uncharitable of you to go shocking my husband so early in the morning like that,” Ghislain growled. “Don’t you know he’s pregnant.” 

Magoughin raised an eyebrow. “Well, there’s one for the books,” he said. “And were you married first or did the Chief demand a shotgun wedding when you knocked him up?”

“Insulting,” Ghislain hummed. “I’m not a filthy rogue scoundrel like some people. Had the decency to come home after the war and everything.” 

“Yes, well,” Mags smirked, “not all of us had a swooning piece of eye candy over their dramatic hero’s rescuer lap to come home for.”

“He was bleeding out,” Ghislain hissed, “you cock,” and then yanked Magoughin forward into a bone-crushing hug. 

“Oof, careful there, kiddo,” Mags wheezed against Ghislain’s massive shoulder. “It’s taken me the best part of a year to mend my ribs. No healers in the mountains. Be terrible bad luck if you snapped them again in your excitement to see me.” 

“You’re a fucking dickhead,” Ghislain said, a throaty gargle of words that made Magoughin’s stomach clench with a sickly cocktail of guilt, relief, grief, and comfort. “I missed you.” 

“Course you did,” Mags agreed, and wrapped his four fingers tightly in the fabric of Ghislain’s sleeve. His throat felt swollen and his breath shuddered behind his re-knitted ribs with the weight of relief that the mountain of his best friend really did still stand, was still gruff and huge and here; still smelled like woodsmoke and sea-salt and - well, yes, okay, perhaps the hint of Luvander’s plummy laundry soap was new, but still. “I am Magsnificent, after all,” he insisted with a mouthful of cambric. “I can’t believe you got married without me. All those jokes I’d been saving for my best man speech. Fucking inconsiderate of you. Gonna lodge a - a formal complaint.”

“Are you crying,” Ghislain rumbled. 

“No,” Mags sobbed. 

*

“Should you be doing that kind of heavy lifting?” Magoughin asked an hour or so later, watching as Luvander brought the kettle to the little table for tea. “In your condition.”

Luvander shot Ghislain a glance which was made entirely of poison and would probably have slain a lesser man. Ghislain winked at him. 

“You do understand basic human anatomy, don’t you?” Luvander checked. “Or did you leave all that information in Ke’Han?”

Mags drew a circle with his absent former hand. “Things can change,” he pointed out. “Margraves can work miracles, after all.” 

“Do you want breakfast,” Luvander scowled, “or not?”

Mags looked at Ghislain, who shrugged and said “hormones. Or Raphael. You can blame him, I think.”

“Do you have an open marriage?” Mags started, and then frowned. “Wait, so - Raphael’s here?” he checked, which was clearly code for  _ he’s alive? _ \- but that was a language that still felt uncomfortable to those who should probably, by all the laws of physics, all be dead themselves. 

Ghislain nodded. Luvander poured tea. 

“Who else?” Mags asked, the words dry and bitter as old kindling. 

“Chief, of course,” Luvander said quietly through the steam from the kettle - a damp smog of discomfort at listing the living, which meant listing the dead by omission. “Balfour Steelballs. Speaking of Margraves working miracles.”

“Rook,” Ghislain threw in before Magoughin could question that. “Because he’s unkillable, like a fucking cockroach.” 

“Truer words were never spoken,” Mags saluted this update with his teacup, a trail of steam trailing from the rim like dragon smoke. 

“And then there’s the desert cactus,” Luvander said. 

“Mm,” Ghislain frowned a bit. “He blooms occasionally.” His brow furrowed like a field under plough. “Ivory,” he explained. “He’s - not exactly the same though.”

“Stark raving mad,” Luvander supplied, the phrase injected with a syrupy shot of false cheer. 

“Sounds the same to me,” Magoughin said. 

“He got stranded on a Bastion-forsaken sand spit in the freezing nowheres and turned the remains of Cassiopeia into a dragon bone piano so he could compose a mating call to Raphael,” Luvander extrapolated, the words too flat and lifeless to make fun with. A plateau of resignation. Magoughin whistled through his teeth. 

“Damn.”

“It was - quite. Horrible, actually.” 

“Where are the lads, then,” Mags asked, clearing his throat of the cobwebs left by both this revelation and the realisation that the list of living Dragon Corps veterans was actually that short. “Since they’re not keeping house with you two. Never thought I’d see you settle down to a life of domestic bliss, mate,” he added to Ghislain. 

“Should’ve come home sooner, then,” Ghislain grunted. “And actually…”

“He’s a pirate,” Luvander announced. 

“Of course you are.” 

“We can take you to Raph’s place after breakfast,” Luvander said, “and up to the house for the rest of them later. Fair warning: Raphael’s bound to have a breakdown and cry all over you. As if he didn’t come back from the dead himself like it was a fun party trick.” 

“I see I’ve got a lot to catch up on.”

“That’s what happens,” Ghislain scowled again, “when you take a bloody gap year to go hiking in the Cobalts instead of coming the fuck home like the rest of your family. Thanks a bunch for letting us know you were still alive, by the way.” 

“You’re welcome,” Magoughin retorted, “thanks for the rescue party. Glad you were concerned enough to come looking for me.” 

“Excuse the both of you,” Luvander sniffed, “as one half of the actual married couple present, I do not condone the pair of you staging a domestic in my kitchen. Especially when you’re both ridiculously enormous brutes who might smash my china if you actually get angry,” he said, indicating the single piece of crockery in his kitchen which was not already chipped, cracked, or otherwise unfit for polite service. “This is genuine top-glazed Lapiz porcelain, I’ll have you know.” 

*

The elegant sprawl of ironwork above the shopfront opposite Yesfir and one door down was polished and glittering; bespeckled with tiny dancing Margraven lights that must have cost Raphael at least a week’s takings. They were extravagant in all the ways Raphael himself wasn’t - expensive and flashy and asking to be observed and admired. 

“Trust Raphael to run a bookshop,” Magoughin commented as they crossed the snowy Rue, all hands in pockets save one of Luvander’s, which was hooked through Ghislain’s elbow in a snug little rose pink mitten. It matched the shade his nose had flushed the moment they’d stepped outside his door. “Did we teach him nothing? The printed page performs at its best when recycled into papier-mache corsetry.”

“Corsetry?” Ghislain frowned. “I just remember tits.”

Magoughin sighed. “Poor Madeline. I missed her, too. Don’t suppose you’ve stashed her away in your backroom for old time’s sake?”

“Ghislain had a Margrave turn her into a figurehead. And Raphael does a roaring trade in filthy romans and contraband illustrations, for your information,” Luvander said. “You have to know a secret code for the pictures, though. Even I don’t know it.”

“Yes, you do,” Ghislain gave him a look which Mags remembered from before, although back then Luvander had never been paying attention. He was glad to see that, at least, had changed - even if it was technically at the expense of another comrade. 

“Where does he get contraband from?” Mags asked, because the middle of Rue de St’Difference was no place to encourage marital sexual tension. 

“This scalliwag supplies it of course,” Luvander told him, nodding his head towards his husband. “Madeline points the way with her varnished paper bust, and then he loots anything, so long as it’s expensive or illegal.”

“You being both, I assume, as the jewel in his crown?”

Luvander released his spare hand from his pocket to give him the finger in response, a doubly insulting gesture given Magoughin’s single handed status, except that it was virtually invisible inside his mitten. 

Fae’s Books was poorly lit and under-dressed for the season - probably because Raphael had spent all his spare change on those Margrave fairy lights outside. There was a thin veneer of dust on the edges of the cramped and crowded shelves where the spines of endless volumes hustled each other for tatty, foxed-edge space. One bookcase proclaimed itself a place to  _ Revisit the Romantic Ramanthe _ and another promised  _ Tycho Tomes _ . To the side of the counter was a cluster of shelves holding second-hand ‘Versity texts with a notice saying  _ Ask about our borrowing catalogue! _ Luvander knew that was the product of a conversation with young Hal about how many scholarship students struggled to afford all their assigned reading, and how poorly the ‘Versity libraries accommodated that. Raphael had literally foamed at the mouth about the libraries having  _ one job _ , Bastion damn it, and then set about building his own out of second-hand stock and reading lists begged, borrowed or stolen from various professors and assistants who passed through his shop. 

“Where’s the naughty stuff, then,” Magoughin asked, crouching down to squint at some of the lower shelves beneath the counter (which Luvander could have told him was the dull Volstovic History section, but didn’t). 

“We’re actually closed,” came a voice from behind the tired and rather repulsive hand-embroidered curtain that separated the shop from the store room and stairs up to Raphael’s living quarters. Luvander was itching to replace that curtain for Raphael - he was convinced it gave him hives, it was so ancient and ugly. It probably had fleas. Raph was inexplicably attached to it, though. To Luvander’s horror, he had once wrapped it around himself like a cloak and pouted, an extraordinary impersonation of th’Esar being denied what he wanted, when Luvander had gently tried to persuade him that something nice and elegant would look so much more enticing in the space. He shuddered now, remembering the distress that had settled in that moment like stale wine in his stomach. 

Raphael bumbled out from behind the horrible curtain now, sideways with his hair in its usual morning disarray and a stack of surprisingly pristine looking romans in his arms. “Oh,” he said when he caught sight of Ghislain and Luvander, “it’s you. Wait - did I forget to lock the front door again?”

“It wouldn’t be a surprise,” Luvander told him curtly, “but no, you didn’t.”

“Then how…”

Ghislain flashed his lockpicks like a pair of miniature daggers. 

“We brought you something,” he said. 

“If it’s another stash of those dirty Kiril sailor’s woodcuts,” Raphael started, and then Magoughin popped up like a puppet from his examination of the boring history books, and Raphael fell backwards through his own atrociously curtained doorway. The pristine romans scattered everywhere like a thunderous hardback hailstorm. 

“Hello,” Magoughin said cheerfully, wiggling the fingers of his one hand in a casual parlour greeting. 

“Fucking shit,” Raphael gasped, “bastard fucking ballsacks fuck,” and then “I mean - shit, fucking fuck. What. Where. The fuck? Fuck.” He clutched his heart in a melodramatic demonstration worthy of one of Niall’s old actress friends. 

Luvander casually snuffed that reference out with the stubs of two wet mental fingers around the wick of his memory. He was getting better at doing that, these days. 

“I forgot how eloquent you are,” Magoughin said. “Such vocabulary. Many words. Very wit. Wow.” 

“Bastion fuck,” Raphael said weakly, staring at the latest arrival. 

“Remember when I told you about breaking news gently,” Luvander murmured to Ghislain. He still had his hand tucked through his husband’s elbow. Ghislain radiated heat, and Raphael hadn’t got the fire lit, probably because he wasn’t officially open yet - although bastion only knew why he was keeping odd business hours now, of all times, in the run-up to the Midwinter festival. 

“Boring,” Ghislain hummed, fat and smug and thrilling. Luvander’s knees hurt for a moment with the strain of keeping him upright to witness something so filthily attractive. 

And then Raphael burst into tears, entirely as Luvander had predicted, and didn’t even seem to care about picking up the scattered sprawl of books he’d spilled because he was too busy scrambling ungracefully over the shop counter to put his hands on Magoughin and pat him down to make sure he was real. Luvander understood that impulse well, although it had worn thinner for him the third time round. Ghislain squeezed his hand, his huge fingers wrapping themselves warmly around Luvander’s still-mittened knuckles, tethering him to the moment. 

It took him a minute to realise they were being watched from behind the hideous curtain. 

“Careful there, Raph,” he hummed, “your watchdog can see you fondling another man’s muscles.” 

“He’s more of a cat,” Raphael sniffled, his face still lost in the jacket Luvander had forced on Magoughin before they left his house. Some men, he had insisted with a significant look at Ghislain, might think they were superior to the elements and thereby incapable of catching a chill in thrice-cursed De-fucking-cember, but Luvander was a terrible nurse and obliged to disagree with them. 

Behind the curtain, the shadow that was Ivory made a noise which was, indeed, suspiciously feline. 

“Did he just meow,” Ghislain whispered. 

The one Ivorian eye that was visible around the edge of the curtain of horrors winked - or perhaps he was blinking, but Luvander wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to believe that Former Airman Ivory had actually just winked at him. 

“He winked at me,” he whispered back to Ghislain. “That’s not appropriate. I’m a married man. Are you going to just stand for that?”

One of Ivory’s crooked hands with its spider span of knobbly fingers appeared, still as white as the desert sand they’d found him wailing in two months ago, and aimed an extremely rude gesture in their direction. 

“I don’t want to alarm anyone,” Magoughin spoke up, petting Raphael’s hair as he continued to weep about miracles for the ages and something that might have been in old Ramanthine, Luvander wasn’t too sure, “but there’s a ghost in the back room and it just called Luvander a wanker.” 

“Oh,” Raphael straightened up, dragging his sleeve across his face in a futile attempt to make himself look respectable again. “Ivory, come on out, babe.” 

“ _ Babe _ ?” Mags mouthed at Ghislain, looking alarmed. Ghislain pulled a face that said  _ don’t try it. _

“Sorry if he scared you,” Raphael said, yanking the curtain of nightmares aside to reveal Ivory, who immediately hunched himself up close to the wall as if he wanted to blend into the paintwork. Unfortunately, Raphael wasn’t terribly interested in decorating, and the wall was a grimy, old, faded grey, against which Ivory practically glowed. “He is very terrifying. Last week he crept up on Troius and made him piss himself,” he added, proudly. 

A flicker of momentary smugness rippled across Ivory’s face, and he let Raphael coax him out properly into the half-light of the shop. 

“Who’s Troius?” Mags asked. 

“Boy oh boy,” Luvander sighed. “Who fancies a trip up to the Estate this afternoon?”

“You’re going to take a half-day off in Midwinter week?” Ghislain eyebrowed him. “Unprecedented. I thought this trip across the street was a stretch. What’s happened to you?”

“You’re a terrible influence my dear, is what,” Luvander told him flatly. “Also, Holly is extremely competent, and Toverre is helping out today too. Double also, there is not a chance in hell I am missing the chief’s face when you show up with another MIA in tow. He’s going to start thinking the casualties list was a giant hoax.”

“Guys, you’re killing me,” Mags complained. “For real, I mean, this time. The Ke’Han didn’t get me, I survived a battering from some literal mountains and an unimaginably long walk home, but this really will be the end of me. What’s the Estate? Where is the house? What do you mean, showing up with a _ nother _ one of us? Who the fucking fuck is Troius? Where’s the chief? How did Balfour get steel balls and where do I sign up because that sounds like a serious gimmick to get you a free night at the ‘Fans. Come on. Give a man the gossip. It’s been a while, here.”

*

There was only so far that carriages could take them out of the city, in spite of their esteemed status as former heroes of Volstov. Most of the time, they tried to keep that on the downlow when out in public anyway, because Raphael and Luvander both said they would be happy to never hear another question about Rook in their lives, thank you very much. There was still a sign pinned over Luvander’s largest display case stating that  _ A fine will be levied for inappropriate questions about former comrades of the proprietor _ . All questions about Rook were deemed inappropriate, of course, by nature of their subject matter.

“How come you’re closed mid-weekday morning anyway,” he asked Raphael as they trudged up the bleak, grubby green hillside that led to the old Greylace Estate, Adamo, Balfour, and state secrets they were none of them supposed to know about. Luvander skidded on a patch of ice, and Raphael caught him by the elbow just in time to stop him from careening face first into a spindly, shivering rose bush. “And how come you’ve left Ivory behind for this grand reunion outfit? How is he doing, anyway? Speaking Volstovic again yet?”

“More than you’d know,” Raphael told him. “I wrote to his brothers a couple of weeks ago.” 

“Oh, his  _ brothers _ ,” Luvander breathed, with a foggy tendril of delight. “I’d forgotten about them.”

“Mm. They came haring down to the city, naturally. Stormed the shop, nearly gave me a heart attack, actually, showing up all beards and wild eyes when I was right in the middle of a quiet and extremely lucrative transaction.” Raphael ran one hand through his hair, which looked even more of a bird’s nest when he’d done so. Luvander kept clinging to his arm, wary of more treacherous surprise ice. Ghislain and Magoughin were striding ahead, being possessors of longer legs. Luvander had also thought it would be an act of kindness and perhaps prudence to allow his husband some reunion time with his resurrected best friend; though he was admittedly sore about giving away the chance to impart an entire year and more’s worth of gossip. Ghislain had surely told Magoughin all the best rumours by now. 

“So we shut for a few days,” Luvander realised Raphael was still talking. “I wasn’t going to, but Ivory insisted.”

“Oh, did he now.”

“It was a bit selfish of me I suppose,” Raphael looked entirely unrepentant. “Not telling them straight away.”

“Well, he was a mad wailing desert ghost for a while there,” Luvander reminded him. 

“No, it wasn’t that,” Raphael glanced at him sideways. “I just wanted to keep him to myself a little while.”

“Yourself and your bed, you mean,” Luvander hummed appreciatively. “You old dog. So that’s why he started talking in full sentences again.” 

Raphael might have blushed slightly, but it was very cold as they crested the hill and caught up to the others, so he couldn’t be sure. 

“What is this place,” Magoughin was asking. “Did Chief get a real whopper of a payoff from th’Esar and buy himself a mansion? Favour from his fancy Molly Margrave pal for getting him unexiled way back when? Or is it just the stately home of Little Lord Balfour?”

“None of the above,” Ghislain said cheerfully. “This place is commonly known as the old Greylace Estate.” 

“Greylace as in Lady, or as in bell-cracked one-eyed mini maniac?” 

“Wouldn’t know,” Ghislain shrugged his expansive shoulders. “We don’t usually call it that anyway. Just amongst us. We know it mostly as the Dragon Manor.” 

“The what now?”

“Can we stop stalling,” Luvander whined, “we’re standing on a hill in the middle of arse over nowhere, freezing our balls off, when there is a warm building  _ right there.  _ Probably with fires blazing, where we can have hot drinks and give our old CO a small aneurysm. Let’s go? Let’s go.”

Raphael gave him a shove towards Ghislain, provoking a squawk not unworthy of the chickens Raphael’s parents kept on their small holding and some ungainly flailing of Luvander’s arms which he’d be mortified about later when Raphael gave an impersonation. “Here you go, big guy,” he smirked. “I know it makes you all hot under the collar when he gets stroppy like that. All yours.”

*

All things considered, Magoughin wasn’t sure which he found most distressing at the dragon manor: the presence of a young lady, Balfour’s new hands and the implication that a Margrave could have been employed to fashion him one of his own years ago if they’d only known, the tiny grumbling dragons themselves, Balfour’s unexpected cheek, or the lack of decent food in the kitchens. 

On second thoughts, the lack of food was definitely the hardest thing to bear. 

Luvander complained that Adamo was getting complacent - or possibly he was drunk - because all he had to say, it turned out, was “is nobody actually dead anymore?” before scowling at the hefty slug of whisky he was pouring himself. 

“Chief’s had a hard day,” Balfour murmured from the doorway, “got himself flirted with again and didn’t know where to put his eyes.” 

“Oh I see,” Magoughin hummed, “so that’s why we never had girls in our ranks before, was it?”

“I didn’t say it was the girl doing the flirting,” Balfour winked, and sauntered off down the corridor, whistling. His wrists clicked as he beckoned to Steelhands with two fingers, and she rumbled after him like a metallic, fiery dog. 

Magoughin listed slowly sideways on to Ghislain’s shoulder. “He’s blossomed,” he whispered, “I can’t handle it. Hold me.” 

Across the tatty mess of a room which served Adamo as an office, the former chief sergeant rubbed his eyes with both forefingers before levelling one of them at the enormous men he hadn’t invited in. “I hope,” he said severely, “that this unexpected return isn’t going to mean that bastion damned pirate wedding ceremony was invalid, or that a messy divorce is on the cards. Lots of paperwork involved in divorces, and I don’t think I can deal with a jilted Luvander.”

“I second that,” Luvander announced cheerfully. “I also cannot deal with a jilted Luvander. Wait - Chief, did you just - did you just make a joke?” 

Ghislain looked considering, and Magoughin smirked in the general direction of the entire room. 

The bottom fell out of Luvander’s stomach as Raphael fell off the sofa he’d sprawled on as soon as they arrived, bashing his chin on the corner of a coffee table and barely noticing as he frothed about a bet he’d just made money on and what a crime it was that Amery wasn’t here to pay up because he’d always  _ known  _ that Big Bad Boulder Buttsex was happening way back when they’d first joined up, and --

“Keep your trousers on, Raphael,” Ghislain interrupted. “As if I’d divorce that magpie of mine, really. He’s pregnant, you know.” 

Luvander tugged the knitted magenta bobble hat from his head, balled it up and tossed it across the room at him. It hit Ghislain in the face with a soft, woolly  _ thwopp _ , and fluttered to the floor. 

Ghislain raised an eyebrow at his husband. “Your aim’s improving,” he said. “I’m impressed.” 

“Yes, but,” Raphael fidgetted, still on the floor. “Can we just - I mean, did you - you two - were you - was I right?” 

“We can’t tell you,” Mags shook his head. “Not unless Amery comes back from the dead, too.” 

“Please don’t concoct abominable concepts like that in my office,” Adamo frowned, pouring more whisky. “I like being able to sleep soundly at night.” 

A brief silence was broken only by the crystalline clink of the decanter bumping against the rim of Adamo’s tumbler and the soft slosh of liquid. Then, in time with the dull thud of the decanter being set back down against the desk, Ghislain said “you know I think we should call the baby Amery.”

Luvander made a noise that was the bastard child of a sigh and a groan. “Is this joke ever going to die?” 

“Bagsy godfather,” Magoughin grinned. 

“Excuse you,” Raphael shrieked, affronted. 

“Best friend privileges,” Mags told him. 

“Resurrected first privileges,” Raphael shot back. 

“Lads,” Ghislain scolded, “how do you know we haven’t already asked Rook?” 

“Because nobody’s that fucked up, however many dead airmen they seem to be able to track down,” Adamo rumbled. “And anyway, I think we all know I’m going to be the godfather, so you can all sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. I want to know exactly where the hell you’ve been for the last year,” he pointed at Magoughin, “without any of the bullshit.”

“Yes, sir,” Magoughin saluted. “And I want to know how Balfour got himself a pair of dragon gloves. Bet he packs a right punch now. Hey, that’s a thought - is my old hand still hanging around?” 

“Ghislain keeps it under his pillow on the boat,” Luvander said sourly. “Like he’s fond of you, or something.” 

“Nah,” Ghislain grinned, “it’s just there because you still screech like a banshee every time you find it, and then you get all clingy.”

Magoughin placed his remaining hand over his heart and heaved a sigh. “I am so proud to have a hand in your marriage even though you didn’t invite me to the wedding. This is even better than being godfather to your imaginary and impossible baby. Congratulations, by the way,” he added to Luvander. “You’re glowing.”

“I’m going to kill you for real,” Luvander announced. “With a hatpin.” 


End file.
